Winter is upon us, in full force. It is 33°. The cloudless sky is a classic Crayola blue. The sun is bright. The air is mostly still though every now and then a small branch moves, slightly. The dogs ran out and quickly ran back inside. It is, of course, their nap time.

My dance card is full for the rest of the week. I have a uke concert today and one each the next two days. I missed a concert yesterday as I was nursing the end of a cold. The cold surprised me. It has been years since my last one. This cold had it all: cough, raspy voice and sniffling nose.

When I was a kid, I always hoped for snow at Christmas, but we seldom got any. The streets and lawns were clear and looked like any other time of year. I wanted Christmas to be special. I wanted Santa to have a snowy runway.

On Christmas Eve, we never had a big dinner. We wouldn’t have eaten it anyway. We were too excited though we did manage to eat a few Christmas cookies, as many as my mother would allow. We watched TV. Santa from New Hampshire was packing up the sleigh and saying goodbye. We wanted to go to bed early. We’re talking six or seven. We wanted to sleep the night away. We wanted Christmas morning. My mother said no.

My first Christmas away from home was way away. I was in Ghana. Christmas in West Africa is during the harmattan when a dry, dusty wind blows in from the Sahara. The air is hazy, hot, desert like. The sun is shrouded by sand. My lips chapped from the dryness. My heels cracked. Every surface in my house was covered with a layer of dust. Cleaning was futile. I just had to learn to live with the dust, no rain and all that sand, but there were saving graces. The mosquitos disappeared. Laundry dried in an instant. My cold shower was refreshing, cooling, but the most welcomed parts of the harmattan were the nights and early mornings. They were cold, down as much as thirty and forty degrees from the daytime. My students layered. I nestled under a wool blanket. I loved feeling cold. It was unexpected, an anomaly.